by Mary Balogh
A Christmas to remember. For the rest of her life. But how would she remember it? With the ache of sadness and loneliness and loss? With sweet nostalgia?
She was free—she found she could not repeat the idea often enough. She could make the rest of her life whatever she wished. There were limits, of course. For any number of reasons one was not always able to do what one wanted in life. And when other people were involved in one’s wants, their wishes had to be considered too. But—
But she was free at least to try to shape her own destiny. She had been a victim for long enough. There were no more excuses for holding back, for retreating inside herself, and for allowing life to happen to her, merely intent on not getting hurt.
There was life to be lived. She was alive and still young and healthy. And she was in love. She turned back to the door, about which were clustered most of the house guests, all gorgeously clad, laughing and conversing and looking admiringly about them, smiling at her as she approached.
She felt aglow with happiness. What a ridiculous thought! She smiled at it and joined the group.
He was not sorry after all that he had come to England, and that in the end he had come all the way home to Thornwood. A great deal of good had happened. The past had been explained and forgiven. The bitterness of years had been purged. There could be some peace now for two people because he had come home.
And yet a part of him longed for Montreal and the home he had made there. Part of him wished—as he had said to her as a joke earlier in the day—that he had not ventured even one mile east of Montreal. Better the dull pain of bitter memories, he was half inclined to think, than the raw pain of this new parting that was upon him. And there seemed to be nothing he could do to avert it. He could not try to take the freedom she had so newly found. If he asked her to marry him, she might feel an obligation because of the pain she had caused him in the past. He could not do that to her.
Of course, there was still the possibility that she was with child. But he hoped not, much as his heart yearned toward the idea.
But there was tonight left, he told himself and a few more days after that. For tonight at least he refused to have his spirits dragged down by gloomy thoughts.
He was almost late in joining the receiving line of his own ball. Lady Gaynor had informed him that her elder daughter was ready to come down, but she had not accompanied him back upstairs as he had expected. He was admitted to Lizzie’s dressing room, where she sat on a stool in front of the dressing table, looking very handsome indeed in white satin and lace. But the arrangement of a few of the ringlets at the back of her head did not quite suit her, and her maid had to work on them for a few minutes longer. And then she did not like the particular strand of pearls she was wearing—it was too long. Her maid had to rummage for the other strand—the one her grandmama had given her for her eighteenth birthday. And then she decided that the silver gloves she was wearing were quite wrong with her gown. The maid was set to finding the white gloves.
His lordship had been all of ten minutes in her room before he was finally able to carry her down to the ballroom. He had had a chair and stool prepared for her close to the doors, where she would not feel neglected or lost to view.
It became quickly apparent that there was no danger of either. With her slippered foot resting on a stool, Lizzie Gaynor quickly became the center of attention as she smiled bravely and even laughed gaily and informed everyone who asked that she was in very little pain, certainly nothing she wished to burden anyone else with, and that she had every intention of enjoying the evening by watching the dancing. No one was to pay her any mind at all. She wafted a graceful hand in the air. She was not going to pin anyone to her side or spoil anyone’s evening.
The earl joined the receiving line with the countess, his aunt, and Margaret. The outside guests were beginning to arrive. He greeted them cordially and set himself to be the attentive host. He was well aware that there had been no balls at Thornwood for many years and that even an invitation to the house had become a rare and coveted event.
And all the time he stood there, smiling, talking, kissing hands, he was aware of Christina beside him, beautiful, elegant, gracious, smelling of lavender—and for this evening and a few more days his to look at, to admire, to yearn for.
“Christina.” He detained her with a hand on her arm when the last of the guests had arrived and it was time for him to begin the ball with Margaret. “You will reserve a set for me?”
“If you wish,” she said coolly.
The tone would have annoyed him a few days before. He ignored it now.
“The last waltz?” he said.
Not the first. It would come too soon in the evening, and as the host he could not dance with the same partner more than once. His dance with her was something to be deferred as long as possible, then, so that he could anticipate it as the crowning moment of the evening—of the whole of Christmas. He had not waltzed with her since that one afternoon here in the ballroom. It seemed like forever ago.
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” For a moment the cool, impersonal look went from her eyes to be replaced by—by what? Pleasure? Longing? Nothing at all of any significance? The look was gone too soon to be interpreted.
And so the Christmas ball began. He danced with Margaret, with Mrs. Ferris, one of his closest neighbors, with Winifred Milchip. And he looked about him and observed that everyone seemed to be delighting in the splendid surroundings, in the novelty of a grand ball in the country complete with full orchestra, in the company of so many other people. And all the while he was aware of Christina, who had clearly changed her mind completely since declaring less than two weeks before that she would not dance at all during the ball. She danced with Geordie Stewart, Mr. Evesham, Viscount Luttrell.
It was after the third set that disaster almost happened. He had strolled over to Lizzie Gaynor’s chair to make sure she needed for nothing though it was perfectly clear that she did not. There was a small crowd of people surrounding her, both house guests and neighbors. She was holding court with her usual bright gaiety.
“May I fetch you anything, Miss Gaynor?” he asked. “A drink, perhaps?”
She stretched out a hand to him and he took it and bowed over it. But he could not immediately release it—it had closed about his own. She was smiling at him brightly and —fondly?
“Nothing, thank you, my lord,” she said. She looked about at her audience. “You see how very well I am cared for? I am really not a cripple, and I might easily have remained in my room both yesterday and today. But his lordship has insisted upon carrying me about and on coming in and out of my room very like a husband.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, tittered, and blushed prettily. “He came up early to bring me down here. I was almost in a state of deshabille. He was alone in my room with me for fully ten minutes, I declare. Some might call it improper. But how could it be called that when—”
He had no idea how she might have ended her sentence. He knew only that with every playful word she was tightening the noose about his neck, making it appear to her avid listeners that he had taken enough liberties with her reputation that he must surely intend to make her his wife. And he was quite powerless to do anything to stop her. Their hands were still clasped, their arms stretched out toward each other.
“Gerard?” The countess’s voice spoke rather more loudly than usual. She set one hand on his outstretched arm and smiled dazzlingly, first at him and then at the whole group. “Is it time, do you think?”
“Time?” He stared at her blankly. He felt rather as if he were drowning.
She bit her lower lip. “For the announcement?” she said.
Had he forgotten something important? He would not be surprised. His mind seemed not to be functioning at all well at the moment.
She laughed and spoke low—though everyone about them heard the words quite clearly, of course. “Of our betrothal,” she said. “You did say just before supper, and the supper dance is next.”
“Then it will be made now,” he said, looking deep into her eyes before leading her off in the direction of the orchestra platform, “without further delay—the moment for which I have waited all Christmas, my love.”
“Oh, dear,” she murmured, her voice not quite steady, as they crossed the floor and a semihush fell on the occupants of the ballroom as if they sensed that something extraordinary was about to happen.
“Indeed,” he agreed fervently.
And then they were together on the platform, and he was announcing to his friends and relatives and neighbors that the Countess of Wanstead had done him the great honor of consenting to be his wife and the new—Countess of Wanstead.
There was laughter, applause, exclamations of surprise, whistles, a lone cheer. And his betrothed, her teeth biting into her lower lip, her dark eyes large in her face, her cheeks glowing with color, gazed back into his eyes as he raised her hand to his lips and bowed to her.
“I would suggest,” he said, “that the gentlemen take their partners for the next set. It is the supper dance. Her ladyship and I will go and see that all is ready in the dining room.”
But if all was not ready there, then his guests would have to go hungry for all the checking either of them did. They proceeded in silence until they reached the library, which was in darkness, there being no fire and no candles lit. It did not matter. He closed the door firmly behind them and backed her against it. He did not need eyes to feel her or smell her—or to hear her laughing.
He leaned against her and laughed with her—idiotic, helpless laughter that neither of them could control for several minutes.
“Oh, the minx!” she said at last. “She had you backed into a corner, Gerard. You should just have seen the frozen smile on your lips and the hunted look in your eyes. In another minute she would have had you proposing in public.”
“Instead of which,” he said, “you had me announcing my betrothal in public.”
The exchange merited another prolonged bout of shared laughter.
“Are we betrothed?” he asked her—a light, teasing question that nevertheless had his stomach performing strange contortions. Her answer, he realized, could change the whole course of both their lives.
“No, of course we are not.” The laughter had gone out of her voice. “You needed rescuing. You set me free last evening. I have returned the favor this evening. We are even. You need not fear scandal when we break it off or when we just let it lapse. You will be far away where gossip does not matter. I will be with my father or here at Thornwood.”
“We will talk tomorrow about how it is to be done,” he said, his heart suddenly in his dancing shoes. “There is no time now. We had better be in the dining room when everyone comes there after the set is finished.”
“Yes,” she said.
“There is going to be a deluge of congratulations and other remarks,” he warned her.
“Yes. I shall merely smile graciously,” she said.
“Let’s go, then.”
But instead of pushing away from her and opening the door, he leaned more heavily against her and found her mouth with his own in the darkness. And slid his arms behind her and about her when he felt hers twining about his shoulders. He could feel the fingers of one of her hands pushing up through his hair as she opened her mouth against his and moaned.
He was not sure how many minutes passed while they held each other and kissed each other as if they could never be close enough to satisfy the craving of their hearts. The depth of their very obviously mutual passion left him shaken and disoriented. But he was aware as he finally lifted his head away from hers that the music in the ballroom had not yet ended.
“There is still the chance that you are with child,” he said, his lips light against hers again.
“Yes.” She whispered the word and pressed her lips softly against his again.
He stepped away from her then and opened the door. Light from the candles in the wall sconces outside beamed in on them and brought a strange assurance of reality to the last few minutes. He smiled at her. She smiled back. They walked to the dining room without exchanging another word.
“I have never been more happy or more surprised in my life,” Lady Hannah said hyperbolically, dabbing at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief. “You and dear Gerard, Christina.”
“But I had the impression you disliked each other,” Margaret protested.
“We did,” Christina said. “But we don’t.”
“I am so happy I could scream,” Margaret told her.
“Please don’t.” Christina felt a strong urge to laugh. This whole episode was strangely hilarious to her. She was bubbling over with happiness—which was peculiar under the circumstances. She would not be able to take the children to London in the spring after all. She would have to remain quietly in the country, either at her father’s or here. Unless . . .
She did not know if she dared.
But of course she dared. She was free. She could do anything she liked.
She turned to greet other well-wishers.
“A leg shackle, old chap,” Viscount Luttrell said, clapping a hand on the earl’s shoulder. “My commiserations. Why am I feeling envious?”
“Because you fancied her yourself?” his friend suggested.
“You might have warned me, by Jove,” the viscount said, sounding considerably aggrieved. “You might have saved me from making a prize ass of myself.”
The Earl of Wanstead grinned at him. “It all happened rather suddenly,” he said.
He was not finding it at all difficult to smile, to accept handshakes and back slaps and kisses and congratulations— and even tears from his aunt. He felt rather like laughing out loud—which was not at all appropriate when he considered the reality of the situation.
But what was the reality? She had lain with him a few days ago. She had just kissed him with the same passion she had shown then. She had meekly agreed that she might be with child—and then kissed him again. She had laughed with him.
Was the reality quite what he had been telling himself it was? Of one thing he was sure. He was not going to go back to Montreal merely because of assumptions he had not tested. No indeed.
He turned with a smile to see who had just placed a hand on his shoulder.
There had been two other sets of waltzes earlier in the evening. Christina had danced neither of them, protesting to the two gentlemen who had asked that she really was not confident of the steps. Gerard had not waltzed either. She had not failed to notice that. She would have been disappointed if he had. She wanted the last waltz to be also their first waltz.
It was the final set of the evening.
“My dance, I believe,” he said, bowing to her and looking at her with bright, intent eyes as she stood with Lady Milchip, Jeannette Campbell, and a group of neighbors.
“Yes.”
She set her hand in his, and suddenly there seemed to be no one else in the ballroom but the two of them as he led her out onto the floor. She neither knew nor cared how many other couples stepped onto the floor with them. She did not notice that by some strange, unspoken assent all those couples stood back so that the newly betrothed couple could dance at least the first few measures alone together.
She even forgot to be anxious about the steps. They moved into the music as if they had waltzed together all their lives.
“It is surely the most lovely dance ever invented,” she said foolishly.
“Without a doubt,” he agreed.
“Gerard—”
“Christina?” He had that dreamy look in his eyes.
“If you really want to go back to Canada—”
“I do not.”
> “If you would really like to stay here, then. Not just in England, I mean, but here at Thornwood—”
“I would.”
“If there is any chance at all that you still feel—”
“I do.”
“So do I,” she said.
They had understood each other perfectly.
“I love you.”
“So do I. I love you too.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I announce our betrothal, then?”
“You already did.”
They grinned at each other and gazed into each other’s eyes until their expressions softened to smiles of warmth and love and wonder—and of a tenderness that was unmistakable to the onlookers. He was twirling her about the perimeter of the dance floor, she realized suddenly. They were waltzing together, perfectly in time to the music, perfectly in step with each other. And perfectly in tune—
“Why are we dancing alone?” she asked him.
“I have no idea,” he said “Are we?”
But even as they noticed that indeed it was so, other couples were taking to the floor with them and those who were not dancing were returning to their conversations.
“You dance as if on gilded clouds,” he said. “You always did. You were born to dance.”
She was aware then with startling clarity of the whole wonderful scene in which they danced—of the rich greens and reds and golds of the Christmas decorations spinning and mingling and merging about them like a kaleidoscope, of the distinctive smell of pine, of the gorgeously clad relatives and friends and guests dancing or chattering about them. And in the very center of her vision—and of her heart and her life—Gerard, the man she had always loved and always would.
There was perhaps a twinge of bittersweet sadness in the moment—it was the last waltz of the evening.
But there was also an inner welling of joy, reflected in the eyes of the man who gazed back at her—it was the first dance of the rest of their lives.